1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a data recording apparatus and more particularly to an apparatus which records sub-code data along with main data on a tape-shaped recording medium by means of a rotary head.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are two kinds of recorders for recording and reproducing digital data. One uses a disc-shaped recording medium, such as a floppy disc, and the other a tape-shaped recording medium. Recorders designed for home use which does not require a large amount of data mainly use a disc-shaped recording medium which permits easy retrieval of data. Recorders designed for business use which require a capacity of handling a large amount of data mainly use a tape-shaped recording medium.
Data recorders being used as data banks for computers of large capacity are arranged to record data on a tape-shaped recording medium with a fixed head. Meanwhile, large amounts of data such as image information have come to be more often handled during recent years. As a result, demand has arisen for a home-use recorder that is capable of handling a large amount of data. The above stated data recorder using a fixed head is hardly suited for home use because of the large quantity of tape to be used and the large size of the apparatus.
In view of this, compact recorders for recording and reproducing data on and from tape-shaped recording media by rotary heads have recently been proposed.
However, the rotary head type data recorder of this kind has presented the following problem: The use of a tape-shaped recording medium requires an extremely long tape access time in picking up desired data. Since there is no absolute address, data cannot be readily erased or renewed as desired. In other words, data cannot be easily edited. To solve this problem, it has been proposed to record some sub-data (hereinafter referred to as ID data) for various retrieval operations along with main data to be recorded by the rotary head. However, it is not easy to detect the desired ID data provided for retrieval with the tape allowed to travel at a high speed. If the tape is allowed to travel at a lowered speed, the length of time required for retrieval would become too long. Therefore, editing work on such data still remains difficult.